


Mobius

by Canaan



Series: Twins!verse [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Missing Scene, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-04
Updated: 2011-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-19 00:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To save the universes, they had to save the Doctor.  To save the Doctor, they had to save Donna.  To save Donna, a certain non-Euclidean geometry was required.  Timey-wimey angstfic with some h/c moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mobius

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after Donna turns right. Follows "A Tough Act to Follow" in the Twins!verse, but you can read it stand-alone. Technically canon-compliant, but I'm filing it under the Twins!verse because things don't come off this dark in canon. Of course, I'm arrogant enough to believe that what I've written is accurate, and it's canon that's not played dark enough. ;) BR by LadyChi and Mimarie.
> 
> Author self-rating: PG-13 or soft R
> 
> Disclaimer: RTD and the BBC own all.

The first time Rose saw Jack in a UNIT facility, she knew she was in the wrong universe. Which would have been a relief if the Doctor weren't still dead in it. She'd thought she was a new Rose, a tougher Rose, until that moment she saw Jack. She had to fight through the shock and the joy and force her legs to move, throwing herself around the nearest corner so he wouldn't see her. She wasn't sure which would be worse: If he thought he knew her or if he didn't recognise her. Either way, she knew her heart would break.

She'd lost her Jack. She'd seen her Doctor dead. One man who should be dead staying alive could change a world. She hoped one Time Lord who should be dead _living_ could change all of them. She had to find the key event, the causal nexus that could save the Doctor's life, and she didn't have time for tearful reunions with a lover she almost knew. Not even for five minutes of shared grief, of not having to be the only one, of crying over them both and having someone understand. If she gave in to that need, she might never find this hard spot in herself again--and then where would they be, all of them? No, for those who _really_ lived--for Mum and Tony and Pete and Mickey--she could let him walk by. She could live with the unanswered question and the unknown outcome.

He never knew she was there.

Torchwood went back to the drawing board, but a hundred different insertions into nearby universes, possibility spurs, and fragmented realities failed to turn up another one with the Doctor in its history. They'd been right the first time. They'd wasted time because she'd seen a ghost, someone who looked like Jack, but wasn't.

She had to start again.

Fortunately, they had the dimension canon. And, as the Doctor once said, it also traveled in time. Or at least, _she_ did.

***

  
The second time Rose saw Jack, he was on the other side of a video conference. She stood out of range of the camera and looked away, but she had to listen to UNIT's finest sneer at just what kind of "intimate knowledge" of the Judoon Captain Harkness might have. Had to hear them scoff at Torchwood, too, which would've made her blood boil, except she remembered too well what Torchwood had been like in London in this universe. Yvonne Hartman's attitude would have offended anyone.

The longer she listened, the more certain she was that this was no twin of Jack's, three thousand years early. This was Captain Jack Harkness in full flower, right down to his ability to lech all over even the people he was arguing with. But he wouldn't be _her_ Jack. It made her heart ache to know that he was going to lose two years of memories, find himself, and be killed by Daleks, and she couldn't warn him or even say goodbye.

After London died in nuclear fire--and she had to harden her heart and remind herself that it wasn't real, it would never have happened if they could just save the Doctor--she found herself going through UNIT's endless records in Geneva, looking for any whisper of a hint of the right causal nexus. She was there when the ATMOS devices began pumping chemicals into the air. She was on the verge of pulling out again, back to the universe with her mum and her baby brother, when the sky burned. As they tried to figure out what happened, all of Torchwood's data repositories suddenly made themselves available to UNIT. It was all there--the keys, the passwords, everything--packaged with a neat little bow and a grim little note that reported this turnover of data as an emergency routine in the event that all hands were lost. The "all hands" roster attached included Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, and Captain Jack Harkness.

Jack had been many things--some admirable and some infuriating--but he'd never been immortal, and no man could die twice. Rose could only come to one conclusion: The Doctor had told her the truth when she'd assumed he'd lied, and she'd just had another lover slip from her fingers without ever knowing it. What was so important about Jack's presence in her time that they couldn't come for him? That the Doctor had _told_ her that Jack had stayed in the 201st century so many times she'd finally _believed_ he was dead?

Was _Jack_ the key? Was he meant to be here, now, because he'd somehow been meant to save the Doctor? And if so, what had gone wrong? _When_ was that causal nexus?

She had her team pull her out again and put her in Cardiff, much earlier. She had UNIT approach Torchwood about a meeting, but she still couldn't give her name. Instead, she sat in the Plas Roald Dahl, where she'd been assured that Torchwood had eyes, and let them see her.

One moment, she was alone, and the next, Jack was there. The look of recognition in his eyes was unmistakable and almost unbearable. And then, she was in his arms.

She did cry.

***

  
"You can't tell them who I am. I'm meant to be dead, here."

"I thought you _were_ dead." Jack's voice was a study of joy mixed in with pain. "You at Canary Wharf, and then him that Christmas. It was like being widowed all over again."

It cut at her heart. She swallowed. "You're sure we're not goin' to be listened in on?" She gestured vaguely around the unassuming room in an anonymous, slightly run-down house.

He shrugged. "Torchwood owns the house. My team's been told not to listen--that it's personal." His smile was wry. "They might even do what they're told. If not . . . well, Ianto can keep secrets and Gwen'll be too embarrassed to say anything."

 _Gwen Cooper. Ianto Jones._ But not dead anymore--that timeline was gone. Rose could get UNIT to help with the Sontarans--she was sure of it. She found herself biting her lip. "Jack . . . " She hesitated.

He knelt in front of her as she perched on the edge of the bed and took her hands in his. "Come on, sweetheart," he said. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours." He was warm and alive and he smelled like her Jack. She found herself telling him everything: Canary Wharf, a goodbye in a parallel universe, endless days of despair, nights spent in bed forgetting herself with other Torchwood agents who were trying to forget, too. The dimension canon . . . and the stars going out.

He told her about waking up after a Dalek exterminated him. About looking for her and the Doctor, stranding himself in the 1800s, and finding he couldn't die. (All hands lost on that Sontaran ship, only Jack would still have been alive when the ship left. Alive, and a prisoner. And she couldn't tell him). Waiting a hundred and forty years . . . and then finding the Doctor dead, his lungs full of the Thames.

By the end of it, they were lying in bed, clinging to one another. Rose found she'd dozed, found herself naked in his arms, found herself kissing him. They made love as if the universe would end tomorrow.

"Ianto," she said, afterward.

He sighed. "I'll explain," he said. "I don't know if it's love, Rose, but whatever it is, it's good. He's important to me. They both are." He chuckled, and it sounded pained. "We'll work it out. Twice. Once now, and after we save the Doctor and this whole timeline disappears, again after you come back for me." He hesitated, his body gone tense in her arms. "You _will_ come back for me, you and him, after he's set the universes to rights. Won't you?"

The tentative note to his voice just killed her. " _'Course_ we will!" she breathed, and held him like her life depended on it.

***

  
Jack was ready to fly off the handle when she told him she'd helped UNIT get into the TARDIS. She had to remind him they were _trying_ to kill this timeline. If they managed, it would never have happened. And if they didn't . . . well, it wouldn't matter for very long.

***

  
Jack didn't know the little girl's name. Rose didn't think she was really a little girl: Her eyes were older than Jack's, if maybe not so old as the Doctor's. "Ask what happens if you _don't_ help us," Jack said as they sat across from her.

The girl laid two cards on the table: a wheel covered by a leaning tower. Rose looked askance at Jack. This was his great idea? The girl stared at the cards for long, silent seconds before she gathered them up and shuffled them back into the deck. "What do you need to know?" she asked.

***

  
This time, Rose told UNIT about the Judoon. UNIT was in direct communication with the aliens in the Royal Hope Hospital on the moon and never took Jack's call.

Everyone died.

***

  
Rose went looking for the Queen of Wands. What was it with fortune-tellers that they couldn't just give you a name and address? No, apparently, they were looking for a tall woman with a fiery temperament and hair to match.

She got UNIT started earlier on a TARDIS spin-off technology--something they were calling "quantum prisming." It would be a way to show the different potentials of a person or object, from all the nearest, strongest universes. If their Queen of Wands had a strong connection to the Doctor at a causal nexus, they might get a good echo of her from Rose's potentials, some of which still linked to the Doctor.

She went to Torchwood, hoping their image recognition programs were as good in this universe as they were in her own Torchwood. What Cardiff's Rift tossed ashore from time to time almost demanded it. It was harder to meet Jack for the first time for the second time. Harder to see both the joy and the memory of grief on his face.

Toshiko Sato was a genius--her image-sorting programs were far better than the ones Rose knew, and Rose wondered why Tosh wasn't working for Torchwood in the other universe. Owen was very much the same as his counterpart, who worked for Torchwood in London, but Rose would never have fallen into bed with this one--he was too damaged.

She wondered what had happened (would happen?) to both of them between now and the Sontarans.

Ianto put her into their systems as agent Jane Smith. She felt herself trying not to cry and let Jack rescue her to his office. A glass of whiskey helped numb her enough to get her through the necessary back-story again. "You don't seem surprised," he said suspiciously, after he told her he was immortal.

She sniffled and smiled. "Not my first go-round," she said. "Time traveler."

He put her to bed in his narrow bunk in the Hub. She dragged him into it with her.

In the morning, she warned him about the Sontarans, and he handed her a swipe card and several different identities for Torchwood access, plus a letter to one Captain Jack Harkness, written in his own hand.

***

  
The Titanic crashed. London burned. UNIT's quantum prisming showed her hazy figures that might have been the Doctor and Jack and Mickey and a sturdy, red-headed woman. The vague impression was no more than they knew already--certainly not clear enough to run it against Tosh's image-recognition programs.

The little girl with the ancient eyes said, "It's too late. When you find her, be sure to get her out of London for Christmas."

***

  
Rose had her team insert her into the Royal Hope Hospital while it was on the moon. She tried talking to the Judoon. When that didn't help, she went looking for an alien, and found Sarah Jane and her young companions along the way. "I'm trying to save him," she confessed as they ran.

The older woman didn't need to ask who. "Crossing your own timeline . . . " she cautioned.

 _It's less like a timeline, and more like a video game with a reset button._ Rose swallowed against a laugh she knew wouldn't sound healthy if it escaped. "It's complicated," she said. "But the fate of the universes is at stake."

For a few joyful minutes, it like running with the Doctor again. And how did Sarah Jane come to have a sonic lipstick and Rose didn't? The "lipstick" might not be as good as the Doctor's screwdriver, but it would be enough to throw a spanner into the works of the plasmavore's plan to modify the MRI machine. "Go!" Sarah Jane said as she chose the lipstick's settings. "Fate of the universes, yeah?"

Rose swallowed back tears and hoped that, this time, they'd make it. She'd just told her team to pull her out when the plasmavore grabbed Luke.

"Please," Sarah Jane begged. "He's my son. Let him go." She tipped the lipstick with all its settings into Maria's hands and walked toward the alien. As she faded out, Rose saw the plasmavore release Luke as his mother gave herself over in his place.

When Rose stumbled on the floor of her own Torchwood and fell to her knees, she shook for a very long time.

***

  
Jack's letter to himself did make things faster.

Rose suggested Torchwood loan Tosh to UNIT for the quantum prisming project. Jack told her to go to hell.

The TARDIS was doing everything she could to help, Rose thought. But she was damaged, maybe dying. It felt like they were just too slow.

Would it be cheating, to capture all the data on the project and take it back with her to an earlier point, to reset the timeline from a better technical vantage? More to the point, would it be dangerous? Nothing she did would change the causal nexus around the Judoon's seizure of the Royal Hope, no matter how hard she flung herself at it . . . but the causal nexus that could have saved the Doctor was so small, they couldn't even find it. When did it become a risk she had to take?

She didn't know. Neither did Jack.

***

  
With only London to search, Tosh's software ran much faster. They still came up with hundreds of photos that could be their Queen of Wands. "A noble lady," the little girl had said. Fat lot of help that was.

Tosh and Ianto begin searching for addresses.

***

  
Cardiff blew up. Ianto went to check on his sister's family. Gwen spent all night working with the police.

Rose shoved Jack into the shower. She washed Cardiff's soil from his skin while he wept. She poured him a double from the decanter on his desk and put him to bed.

She was hanging his coat in his office when Ianto walked in. "I didn't want him to have to look at it," she said tiredly. "It means a lot to him, but I don't know if the dirt will ever come out. He can't want to remember that."

Ianto hesitated. "You've a smudge," he said. He wiped it from her cheek, then looked quickly away, his eyes coming to rest on Jack's coat. "We have a really good dry-cleaner. I'll take care of it. Has Jack slept long?" She shook her head. "He mostly doesn't," he said softly.

Rose poured a whiskey for him, too, and one for herself. They perched on the edge of Jack's desk and sipped. "I hope Rhys takes Gwen home before she falls down," she sighed. For Tosh and Owen, there was nothing to be done. Knowing she'd see them again helped. A little. She and Ianto finished their drinks in silence. He looked at her awkwardly.

She set her glass on the desk and laced her fingers through his, standing and then tugging at his hand till he got up and followed her. He hesitated when she opened the hatch to Jack's quarters. She sighed, used his tie for leverage, and kissed him. He stared at her, grief and arousal dulling the shock in his eyes. "He needs us both," she said. "Tell me you don't need someone, too."

"The bed's narrow," he said. "And the floor's cold."

"I'll bring the sofa cushions." She sent him down the ladder.

There was a time it had surprised her, how easy it was to care for someone when you were both in love with the same bloke. As she collected the cushions and squeezed them through the hatch before her, that seemed like a long time ago.

They made up a bed on the floor, from the cushions and Jack's mattress. It was still narrow, but it was enough for three.

***

  
The night before the Sontarans would begin flooding the atmosphere with noxious gasses, Rose went to Jack. She told him what he'd have to do, asked how UNIT could help, and shagged him within an inch of his life.

At least he wouldn't die.

Ianto and Gwen did.

***

  
"Please."

"Hell no."

"Why not?"

Jack was furious. But not, Rose thought, with her. "Let me tell you what UNIT did to Toshiko," he said.

***

  
Tosh's programs had led to pages and pages of home addresses for potential matches. It would take a very long time to visit them all, and Rose still didn't know how they'd know the woman when they found her. There had to be some way of correlating these women to the Doctor's known movements. Rose put UNIT's resources on it: If any of the potentials had had any previous contact with him, they should find it. She hoped. She kept two copies of the data with her as she crossed realities like skipping rope: the jump drive read in one universe and the fob drive worked in the other.

And which universe was her own, anymore? The one with her mum, or the one with Jack? The one where she ate and slept and lived a celibate life, or the one where she shared Jack's bed and tried not to think of the griefs to come? Which Torchwood was _her_ Torchwood? The one with the dimension canon, where she was on the payroll? Or the one where Owen and Gwen and Ianto and Tosh knew her as Torchwood agent Jane Smith?--where Owen flirted with her but never tried to get into her knickers; where boosting Tosh's social confidence was an ongoing, repeating mission; where she and Gwen took turns playing confidant, each to the other; where she watched Ianto try to figure out his relationship to Jack and try, and try, and try.

She was at her own desk, with a cold cup of tea at her elbow, resting her cheek in her hand and trying not to let her eyes glaze as she pored over the lengthy list of addresses. When she spotted a Donna Noble in Chiswick, she felt like a prize fool.

***

  
Jack held her like he was afraid she'd disappear into thin air and ignored the letter she'd dropped on his desk. "I don't know how you're alive," he breathed. "And I don't ever want to let you go. But do you have any idea how many rules of timeline integrity that letter's got to violate?"

"At least seven," she mumbled into his shoulder, her fingers pressing into his back hard enough to leave bruises. "You told me so last time you added to it."

***

  
"When you find her," the little girl said, "tell her to turn left."

***

  
They never survived the Sontarans. Mostly, they all died and Jack was taken away--probably for someone to try and clone him, based on what Rose had learned about Sontarans. If she gave away too much, he tried to keep Gwen and Ianto from going with him. If he succeeded, the outcome of that causal nexus went the wrong way, and she had to have her team pull her out before the Sontarans began growing clones on the Earth in earnest.

She hoped the Doctor would be able to intervene--UNIT's help had never changed the outcome. She hoped this wasn't why the Doctor had never come for Jack. She _needed_ the Doctor to save Ianto and Gwen. She was so tired of losing people.

She tried to stay away, but how could she not see Jack one more time before she lost him again? And again. And again.

***

  
Torchwood learned everything there was to know about a temp from Chiswick, except how to make her believe she was more than a temp from Chiswick.

They hadn't managed to keep her alive past London's death, either.

***

  
"I need Toshiko."

Jack looked up from the papers he was poring over. "Why?"

"Maybe there's a fancier name for it in the future, but it's called quantum prisming right now. It lets us see strong probabilities within a container area. We can use it to find the particular causal nexus where Donna needs to do something differently to save the Doctor. Or we could, if it worked."

He studied her across his desk. It was a jump, she thought, for him to hear the woman who hadn't been able to pronounce Raxicoricofalipatorious throwing around words that had to do with temporal physics like she knew what she was talking about. _And sometimes, I almost do,_ Rose thought glumly.

"You think Tosh can make it work?" he asked.

She nodded. "Cardiff sits on top of a rift in space-time. The quantum interference in this area's amazing. Tosh's rift monitor works right through it. She's been improvising solutions _in the field_ to problems UNIT's scientists think are only theory." Rose winced. Now she'd gone and done it.

Jack frowned at her, predictable in defence of his team as only a man who's reacted this way in a dozen different realities could be. "UNIT," he said, flatly.

She sighed. "I know, Jack. I know her history. If I could think of any other way to make this work, I would."

He shook his head. "No. I'm sorry . . . Jane."

"Were you ever going to ask _me_ , Jack?" Toshiko said from the doorway.

***

  
The raffle ticket was a stroke of genius. It was Rhys who said, during dinner at his and Gwen's flat, "It has to be free. A prize or something. Who wouldn't take a trip to the country if it was free?"

Rose blinked, then grinned hugely, remembering a certain lottery ticket the Doctor had once used to good effect. "That's brilliant, Rhys. I could kiss you, but then Gwen and I'd have a row." She grinned, and Gwen kissed him instead.

A few words in the right ears provided the raffle prize. Rose saw to the placement of the winning ticket, herself. The first time she talked Donna into Christmas in the country, her heart leapt.

***

  
The quantum prisming effect was beautiful and terrifying. Toshiko stood in the center of the container just once, to see for herself that it worked, and then refused to have any more to do with it.

"Thank you, Tosh," Rose said, hugging her friend.

Tosh returned the hug. Her voice was thick with suppressed tears when she said, "No one's meant to know that much about what they _could_ have been."

"I'm sorry," Rose said. "I'm so sorry."

They started extrapolating data off of Rose's closest realities. The results were . . . not promising.

She took a copy of the plans for the working quantum prism. They would _not_ be starting from scratch next time. It was a risk she had to take.

***

  
The next-to-last card the little girl lay on the table was a cowled figure with a scythe. "Please tell me that doesn't mean what I think it means," Rose said.

The girl just looked at her. "The ending," she said, pointing to the wheel that followed Death, "is full of possibilities."

Jack's arm tightened around Rose's waist as he hugged her closer. "How many times did you think traveling with the Doctor was going to get you killed?" he asked softly. "Would you have traded it for anything, even if you'd known for sure ahead of time?"

"I'm so tired of sending people to die," Rose whispered.

***

  
It was the Sontarans again. She didn't have to tell him; she thought he knew. It was what women used to do: easing the mind and heart of a man, wearing him out with pleasure before sending him into battle. A soldier's send-off.

***

  
Rose was sick for three weeks. Her mum fretted. Mickey tried to keep tabs on how long she worked in the other universe, but Rose told him she'd been sleeping there--whether she had or not. She was wearing herself down to nothing, she couldn't keep food down, and she still hadn't told Donna she was going to die.

It wouldn't matter if they couldn't find the right nexus. Add to that, Donna didn't impress Rose as the type of woman who took anybody else's word for things, which meant there was probably nothing they could send back to her to convince her to change the outcome of that nexus. Which meant they were going to need at least a limited time machine, thousands of years before humans were meant to have that technology. Win her over and send her back to talk to herself--and hope the universes didn't implode.

Rose spent hours in the TARDIS, talking to the beautiful ship and stroking the central console, trying to connect with what was left of the her long enough to enlist her help.

When Rose fainted, Mickey took her home to mum. Jackie'd bought chicken soup and a home pregnancy test. With her on the pill and condoms at Jack's insistence, Rose didn't know if she was horrified or elated at the idea.

It didn't turn blue.

She still didn't know how she felt.

She slept the clock around, ate soup, and slept again. When she woke up, she felt more like herself than she had in weeks.

Jackie extracted a promise from Rose that she'd pay more attention to eating and sleeping and sent her daughter back to Torchwood.

***

  
"What will you do when you get your Doctor back?" Gwen asked.

They'd just lost Owen and Tosh again, and the empty places in the Hub ached. "Find him before the stars start to go out," Rose said. "Help him however I can and hope to God he can keep it from happening." She smiled against the pain. "Kiss my mum goodbye, hold him tight, and never let him go. For as long as I have."

The two of them were having tea in the conference room. It was a break during a long session where Jack tried to teach temporal theory and they all studied probability charts. Jack and Ianto, Rose thought, were probably in Jack's quarters having a quickie. "That's not what I meant," Gwen said softly. "You loved him."

"I did," Rose agreed. She smiled. "I do."

"You love Jack."

Rose shrugged. "So do you." Because it was obvious: Gwen loved Jack, and he tried like hell not to love her. Even if she and Rose _hadn't_ talked about it in three or four other realities, Rose would have seen it.

In this one, Gwen shook her head. "I'm a married woman, Jane. I love Rhys."

Rose sipped her tea, wishing it were warmer. "You love both of them. You _chose_ Rhys. Nothin' wrong with that." Gwen opened her mouth, but Rose shook her head. "You _chose_. I don't have to. I love them both. If Jack and the Doctor are okay with that, so'm I."

Gwen stared at her like she'd just turned into a Weevil. "Do you really think they would be?" Like it never occurred to her, or she couldn't believe it, or both.

Rose smiled. "Would've been, once. If the Doctor says he isn't, we'll have words." She still didn't know why they hadn't come for Jack.

Gwen looked out toward the center of the hub. "It's like nothing else, getting someone back from the dead," she mused. And who else could say that from personal knowledge? "So your Doctor will be okay. And Jack? He's a strong personality. You're okay sharing him--but will _he_ be okay sharing _you_? And he'd be here, and your Doctor flying about in his blue box."

Rose would've laughed, except this wasn't really about her: It was about Gwen, and Gwen's situation wasn't funny. "Gwen," she said gently, "this is _Jack_ we're talking about. He loved the Doctor, too. If Rhys was okay with you and Jack, are you tellin' me it wouldn't be the three of you?"

The look on Gwen's face was both priceless and painful. "I can't even imagine it," she muttered. "Rhys _wouldn't_ be."

Rose tried to picture it. "No. He wouldn't, would he?" She smiled. "As for the blue box, well, we'll work something out."

***

  
The first time Rose got Donna into the quantum prisming container was a disaster. It could never have been anything else, but Rose _hated_ that it was a do-over. She hated taking on any situation as if it mightn't be the last time. Doing anything else felt like she was growing callous. And she'd rather come to like Donna.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, as Donna fell to the floor, shrieking and clutching at her back. Donna wasn't ready to face this kind of reality, yet; Rose had lied to get her here. They still hadn't found the right causal nexus. They had to read Donna's probable realities.

There were readings off Donna, readings off the creature . . . it was such a flood of data, UNIT didn't even quibble when she asked them to capture a copy of it for Toshiko. After all--from their point of view, Rose had provided the plans for the quantum prisming device. "How much is 'a flood' of data?" Rose asked.

The tech on site shook her head and stared blankly at the screens. "I think . . . we can extrapolate several years of a whole other universe from this. It's like reality _bent_ around her. If we can't pick out the right causal nexus from this, it just can't be _done_."

"Bite your tongue," Rose said. Donna sat on the floor and sobbed. Rose swallowed. "Now all we need is a time machine."

Rose's team pulled her out and re-inserted her in Cardiff. She entered the Hub through the cog door, threw herself into Jack's arms, and tried to forget Donna's crying.

***

  
She went back with the complete plans for the dimension canon and Jack's beloved wrist-strap with its burnt-out Vortex manipulator.

The TARDIS was able to pinpoint the causal nexus, down to the exact date and time. Between UNIT's investigations, Torchwood's, and what she could get from the TARDIS, they built a fairly complete picture of the major Earth-intersections of the Doctor's timeline. And Donna's--Donna Noble would be brilliant. If Rose couldn't be with the Doctor, someone should. She was happy that it had been Donna. _Would_ be Donna.

They wouldn't save everyone. The Doctor never could. But they'd save a lot of them.

Maybe it would even feel like enough.

***

  
Jack thought Rose was forgetting how to smile and dragged her off for a break. They went to the zoo, ate candy floss, and watched the antics of the monkeys. Afterward, they checked into a hotel, for the novelty of a real bed.

It was a nice hotel. Rose had a massage. They had dinner in the restaurant. There was a whirlpool bath for later. She and Jack made long, slow, tender love in the spacious bed. Afterward, they lay twined together as their heartrates slowed.

Jack brushed his thumb beneath her eye, where she knew she always had dark circles now. "I know," she murmured. "It's just going to be like that. I've got good at puttin' on a brave face, but it's killing me, Jack. How many times can I do this? How much more can I bear?"

He kissed the side of her mouth. "As much as you have to," he said softly. "As many times as it takes. Until we get him back." His expression lightened with the thought.

She imagined the Doctor, to make herself smile. His fingers in hers. The way his hair just got wilder and wilder as he tugged at it. The lean strength of his shoulders beneath her hands and the way his lips brushed against her fingertips as she tried to shut him up. The universes wouldn't end. The Doctor would sort it. "Until we get it right," she said.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Mobius](https://archiveofourown.org/works/317340) by [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry)




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